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Subject: citation proposal
This proposal is for RFE 810932 "Improved citation support". I'm not the author; I'm channeling this proposal for three DocBook users Bruce D'Arcus, Peter Flynn, and Markus Hoenicka. If Norm finds room for this item on the agenda, I wonder if it would be appropriate to invite one of them to sit in on that part of the call to answer questions. Bob Stayton Sagehill Enterprises bobs@sagehill.net ----- Forwarded message from Bruce D'Arcus <bdarcus@fastmail.fm> ----- Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2003 22:46:49 -0400 Subject: citation proposal From: Bruce D'Arcus <bdarcus@fastmail.fm> To: Bob Stayton <bobs@sco.com> OK Bob, After wrangling over this for awhile, here is the proposal the three of us have settled on. A group of us have been discussing improved bibliographic and citation support in XML for about the past year, though much of that has been focused on metadata models and xslt-based formatting. Still, these basic DTD changes are essential to making DocBook suitable for scholarly work, which I once read Terry Allen had considered as a goal. Let me know how things proceed, and if anyone has any comments and/or questions. Best place to go for those interested is the bibliofile page, where there is a link for the mailing list: http://silmaril.ie/bibliofile/ Bruce ************************************************************ Improved citation support in DocBook ==================================== Citation support in DocBook is weak. In order to improve it, some small code changes are needed. 1. Terminology -------------- A citation describes the intellectual origin of a stretch of text, regardless of whether this is a literal quote, an edited excerpt, or a statement based on the content of sources other than the author's personal work. It can also be used to refer the reader to additional information that goes beyond the scope of the document. A citation can contain bibliographic references, although it is more common to use pointers to bibliographic references. As the knowledge compiled in a statement may be drawn from several sources, it is sometimes necessary to use two or more references or pointers to references in a citation. In addition, a citation may contain other explanatory text. A bibliographic reference is a "self-sufficient description of a bibliographic item" (as the TEI guidelines define it), and as such usually sufficient to locate a printed or electronic copy of the referenced work. It is common to collect bibliographic references in a list at the end of a document or of a chapter. A pointer to a bibliographic reference is a cross-reference that links citations to bibliographic references, thus eliminating the need to provide the bulk of the bibliographic information in the text flow. The pointer is usually rendered using a citation key, the number of the bibliographic reference in the reference list, or an author/year representation of that reference. The following graph outlines the relationship of these three items (use a fixed font for display if it doesn't seem to make sense): Mainframe computers have gained widespread acceptance as a replacement for slide rules (Miller 1999; Doe 2000). ^---------^ pointer to reference 1 ^------^ pointer to reference 2 ^---------------------^ citation Miller,A: A survey of the applications of mainframe < reference 1 computers. Adv.Sci.Comp. 13:497, 1999. Doe, B: Mainframes and numeric mathematics. Am.J.Eng. < reference 2 54:87, 2000. DocBook contains sufficient support to encode bibliographic references (<bibliography> and related elements). However, the support for pointers to bibliographic references should be extended to make DocBook more versatile. The changes are proposed 1) to make the formatting of citations and bibliographic references according to a publisher-supplied style specification feasible and 2) to allow DocBook to be used for documents that have more demanding requirements for citations. 2. New attribute "renderas" for the <citation> element ------------------------------------------------------- Citations may be used in different ways by an author. This may influence the processing expectations of <citation> elements. The <citation> element should be extended with an attribute that allows an author to select a specific processing expectation. 1) Citation outside of the text flow This is the most common case. The citation is to be rendered outside the text flow, for example in brackets or as a superscript (this is at the discretion of the stylesheet or of a processing application): Computers require an operating system (Miller et al., 1999). Computers require an operating system [1]. 2) Citation in the text flow Sometimes it is required to integrate parts of the bibliographic reference into the text flow. These parts must still retain their function as a pointer to a bibliographic reference: Miller et al. (1999) analyzed 250 common computer models and concluded that all of them required an operating system. Miller et al. [1] analyzed 250 common computer models and concluded that all of them required an operating system. In this case, both "Miller et al." and "(1999)" or "[1]", respectively, are citations with one pointer to a bibliographic reference each. However, their integration into the text flow requires that each is rendered differently and in a different way compared to 1). Examples: <citation renderas="full"><biblioref linkend="Miller1999" /></citation> <citation renderas="author"><biblioref linkend="Miller1999" /></citation> <citation renderas="year"><biblioref linkend="Miller1999" /></citation> Code required: Addition of renderas to the ATTLIST of <citation> as NMTOKEN #IMPLIED Level: essential 3. Addition of new <biblioref> and <bibliospec> elements -------------------------------------------------------- While it is possible to use the existing <xref> element in a <citation> to encode pointers to entries in a <bibliography> (please note the striking identity in the semantics of a pointer and <xref>), the <xref> element is not suitable to carry additional bibliographic information that applies only to the current citation. For example, if the bibliographic reference describes a book, a citation may specifically refer to a chapter or to a range of pages in that book. Think of the proposed <biblioref> as an extension of <xref> that allows children, namely <bibliospec>, to specify additional bibliographic information. Applications are expected to process this element in a way that uses both the information provided in the bibliographic reference pointed to (e.g. a citation key, the number of the entry in the bibliography, or an author/year representation of the reference) and the additional information provided in the children. If a <citation> contains more than one <biblioref>, processing applications are expected to render them as a unit. For example, pointers to consecutive entries in a numbered bibliography may be rendered as "[1-3]". The <bibliospec> element is preferable to allowing #PCDATA in <biblioref> because the formatting of the provided information should be left to stylesheets. For example, a range of pages may be rendered as "pages 12 through 15", "pp 12-15", or maybe as "pp 12 sq". Example: <citation><biblioref linkend="Miller1999"><bibliospec unit="stanza" start="2" /><bibliospec unit="line" start="3" stop="4" /></biblioref></citation> Code required: Addition of elements with the following content models and attributes: <!ELEMENT biblioref (bibliospec*)> <!ATTLIST biblioref linkend IDREF #IMPLIED endterm IDREF #IMPLIED> <!ELEMENT bibliospec EMPTY> <!ATTLIST bibliospec unit NMTOKEN #REQUIRED start NMTOKEN #REQUIRED stop NMTOKEN #IMPLIED> Inclusion of <biblioref> into the content model of <citation> Alternative: If the inclusion of two elements seems excessive, we may consider to use a simplified <biblioref> element: <!ELEMENT biblioref (bibliospec*)> <!ATTLIST biblioref linkend IDREF #IMPLIED endterm IDREF #IMPLIED unit NMTOKEN #REQUIRED start NMTOKEN #REQUIRED stop NMTOKEN #IMPLIED> This restrics the author to using a single level of bibliographic information, like a page range or a chapter range, but not both at a time. This may still be sufficient for most purposes. Level: essential 4. Specification of navigational information in citations --------------------------------------------------------- Add free-text caption or instructional text to citations to direct the reader. Example: <citation refs="Smith99" caption="left figure">... Code required: add an attribute "caption CDATA #IMPLIED" to citation. Alternative: add caption element type to the content model <!ELEMENT citation %ho; (%para.char.mix;|caption)*> Level: important. 5. Add <biblioref> to the content model of element types implying quotation -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Add <biblioref> to the content model of <quote>, <blockquote> and <epigraph> Example: <quote>A quote <biblioref linkend="Smith1999"><bibliospec unit="page" start="22" stop="23 /></biblioref></quote> Code required: Extend the content models of <blockquote> and <epigraph> to allow <biblioref> elements. Level: important ----- End forwarded message -----
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